Musings of a Skeptic Oslerphile

Got A Coupla’ Crores Lying Around? Go, Buy An MD Degree!

Rant Alert: The post below comes from a MCQ-mauled, beleaguered medical student who is suffering an early mid-life crisis. So switch off your brain cells before you commence reading! If you are the type whose sensibilities are easily hurt, turn back. You have been warned…

Bit of news from today’s newspaper.

So I know a lot of people will raise the argument that if people have the money to spend, they can do whatever they want with it, and that is none of my business, but these are the reasons for which news bits like this grind my gears:

Obviously, this means that the rich people get an undue advantage when it comes to getting through to the higher echelons of medical education – and this should not be fair. Call me a leftist commie (trust me, I have been called much worse), but some times, equality and all those stuff are right on the money… or the lack of it!

This guy who has coughed up the annual budget of a small African nation for a dignified degree, once he passes out, will unleash his Shylockian fury on the masses in an effort to raise this amount as soon as he can. With Radiologists, it is an understatement to say the sky is the limit for earning, so one can easily guess how hard he will fetch once he gets out with the tag of an MD!

A senior professor from JJ Hospital said: “It is scary to think of the means a doctor would adopt to recover the donation amount from society.”

While I may be hypothesizing a bit here, the quality of physicians who have paid their way through medical school and a post graduate degree is unlikely to be same as one who has had to work his way through. Before you attack me, let me say that this is pure conjecture, based on human nature. If one has the luxury of just throwing some money at some one in order to pass the bar, they should be less committed to their course and profession. Earning it after spending days cohabitating with MCQs, making a hell out of your life and generally being miserable socially, economically and personally (not to say, financially as well), well… that gives an entirely new flavor to the show!

Training doctors is an expensive affair. Even more so when it is in super specialties like Radiology and Interventional Radiology. So, it is quite understandable that these institutes need to suck out as much money as they can to balance the bill, but somehow it seems to be an unfair form of exploitation of the medical education scenario.

In a nation where there is intense, cut throat competition due to a pyramidal seat structure, this is like using the students’ desperation. In the United States, by comparison, there is a reverse pyramidal structure, so much so that it caters to the training desires of students from all over the world. India, on the other hand, cannot even accommodate a third of the students that graduate each year into a definite post graduation course. That, added to the free handing out of licenses to run private, autonomous/deemed universities for medical education, has brought about this on us.

This kind of seat selling, with the seat going to the highest bidder somehow makes me cringe. I am an eternal romantic and I think this cheapens the glory of being a medical professional.

Things like this could probably be curbed with the institution of a common entrance test. The reason why this was being fiercely contested by some segments is because of the large number of private medical colleges and their fates involved in the institution of this CET.

Or maybe, like in the Anna Hazare issue where political masterminds have sniffed out the evil, dark hand of America orchestrating the whole thing, this is also one of their covert operations to create rift in the struggling medical student faction. Dammit the philosopher Peter Griffin was so right when he said: “… You America! Fuck YOU!”

all i can say is that dont take toi reports at face value,. after living abroad in so called developed countries i have realised that the quality of indian medical care is exemplary. of course u have to be able to afford it.

Brilliant piece on LOSERS on the blog… and yeah, I agree, its stupid to take anything at face value, but in this case, I happen to KNOW that this happens and the TOI article was just the stimulus… the selling of pg seats is the worst kept secret in medical education!

I have seen MBBS seats in absolutely rubbish institutes (no offense to the grads from those private colleges- but I have heard the true stories from administrators of those colleges) being sold for 60lakhs, and PG seats for more than double the amount. And these students with the money pay their way through college too to pass each year…. This money is used to get the administrative clearance for running the medical college, the fake list of infrastructure and faculty. A vicious cycle it is. Absolute rubbish is the education system.

Ah well said R. A vicious cycle and one wonders how the doctors that come out with these degrees will provide empathy for their patients when their primary objective in life will be to balance their sheets! ROI! That is the key word here…

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Pranab Chatterjee

Skeptic Oslerphile, Public Health Specialist and Program Manager, Translational Global Health Policy Research Cell, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India; Scientist, Indian Council of Medical Research, National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases. Past: Senior Research Associate, Public Health Foundation of India. Interests include: Emerging Infections, Public Health, Antimicrobial Resistance, One Health and Zoonoses, Diarrheal Diseases, Medical Education, Medical History, Open Access, Healthcare Social Media and Health2.0. Opinions are my own!
View all posts by Pranab Chatterjee

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